“Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre. Every head was made bald, and every shoulder was rubbed bare, yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre to pay for the labor that he had performed against her. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it; and it shall be the wages for his army. I have given him the land of Egypt as his payment for which he labored, because they worked for me, declares the Lord God.
Truth: God employees the strangest of workers to accomplish His plans.
In the above passages in Ezekiel, the prophet is prophesying about the nations who did Israel harm, highly exalted themselves and refused to honor and give glory to God. God sees their pride and uses other nations to correct and discipline them. One of those nations God used was Babylon. Tyre had highly exalted herself in the midst of the world (see chapters 27-28). God brought her low by sending to her Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. God would, eventually, bring down Nebuchadnezzar, for the same reasons He brings down the king of Tyre: Pride and self-exaltation. But, the above passage is about how God used the king of Babylon as His instrument to complete His tasks. We often think that the wicked of this world have one mission; to destroy God's plan. Although that may be true in their overall plan, as they don't consider God's plan, it is not true of how God uses them to accomplish His task. There is not doubt, as we see later, that Nebuchadnezzar had no respect for God. Note that one of his commanders says to the King of Judah during one of their many sieges of the city of Jerusalem:
2 Kings 18:19-25
And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours? Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me? Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem”? Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.’”
God used Babylon to correct Tyre, but also to correct Judah and Israel. Later God would destroy Nebuchadnezzar because of his own pride. But, the truth we have to see is that when we see the wicked flourish we might consider that God is using their very wickedness to discipline and to enact His plan. God does this by simply removing His restraining grace. If it were not for God grace in the world we would all consume each other. Sin would run rampant without God's grace. When God uses wicked people, like Nebuchadnezzar, He doesn't make Nebuchadnezzar wicked. Nebuchadnezzar is already wicked. God simply removes His restraints and allows that wickedness to do what it does; practice evil. So, we can see that God employees some strange workers.
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